Need hard disk advice for HPUX 9000/800 11i system

[Geoff Valdez]

Hello,
I am an Oracle DBA and new to system administration tasks, but I have been tasked with upgrading or installing some additional disk space on our HPUX server. I am interested in 2 150GB hard drives, or 1 300GB hard drive, whichever would be more feasible costwise and performance wise.

I'm trying to find out the basics (compatible disk drives, install instructions, vendors, etc.) for our system. However, since this is my first time installing a disk drive on an HPUX box, I would appreciate some advice on where I can start. I am especially looking for vendors of the hard disks (once I find out what kind I need) so that I can prepare a quote a.s.a.p. and forward it to management.

Any advice would be appreciated by the sysadmin experts out there...

thanks...

[Chan 007]

Geoff,

DISKs are mentioned in the /etc/disktab.

Also the disks not present in that can be manually added to that file. All you need to do is just Add the disk entry in /etc/disktab.

Contact HP, as get the recommended HP and even if you problem you can contact them for support.

Cheers ...007

[Geoff Valdez]

Chan 007,

Thanks for the advice. /etc/disktab file is helpful. What values in the /etc/disktab file show me what is currently installed (as well as the current configuration) on my system?

gv

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Disktab is really obsolete. Essentially almost any SCSI disk will work as data storage but you must choose compatible SCSI configurations. It's a little difficult to help when you don't bother to identify the HP server, the OS version, the kinds/models of the controllers, and whether you are looking for internal or external drives. In general, more smaller disks will outperform fewer larger disks and the more the i/o can be spread across multiple SCSI buses the better.

Post the model, proposed usage of the disk(s) (e.g. Oracle data), and the results of ioscan -fn and more useful information will be forthcoming.

[Geoff Valdez]

Clay,

Please view the attachment for the additional info. you requested.

additional system info:
# uname -a
HP-UX wisdom B.11.11 U 9000/800 701937670 unlimited-user license
#

I would perfer to install 2 150GB disks to be used for Oracle datafiles, archive logs, etc. Here are the current settings for the /data/d1 mount point :

# bdf /data/d1
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/RAID1/data1 102400000 94290160 8059288 92% /data/d1

Thanks again for everyone's help in this forum...

[Geoff Valdez]

forgot to edit the ioscan results file. here is a cleaned up attachment.

[Bill Hassell]

I'm sure as an Oracle DBA you understand that access patterns for data files versus redo, rollback and intent files as well as the Oracle install directories. So for performance, you nev er want these all on the same physical disk. Generally speaking, the busiest files need to be on separate disks and this would make one big (300Gb) disk undesirable. You would be better off with two 150Gb, put them in one volume and then carve out the data areas and make sure the high access lvols are on the second disk.

It appears that you do not have disk mirroring which is a very risky situation in case of disk failure. Disks (when they are not part of an external array controller) should be added in pairs and mirrored.

As far as adding the disk to the hardware, there are many, many options but we'll need to know the model number (uname is generic, use the model command) of the server and whether there is an external disk enclosure (the most desirable configuration).

[Shameer.V.A]

Hi Geoff,
From the ioscan , it is clear that there is an external storage enclosure, which is configured in RAID 5. I think this you are currently using for your data storage. Please confirm that whether you want to add this new disk to existing enclosure??. Or will you put the new disks to server hdd slot. In that case you should have free hdd slots on server, already you are having 2 36Gb installed on server ( May be mirrored vg00). Mid range servers won't have more than 2 hdd slots.

Check the Storage enclosure free slot availability . Please check the compatibility of the higher capacity disks you are purchasing with the existing storage array , as new disk may have more rpm , which may not supported on old arrays.

Please give the following output for further checking

#diskinfo /dev/rdsk/c4t0d0

#model
#strings /etc/lvmtab
# vgdisplay -v

You should think of the availability of data also, It is a database server, & disk can fail at any time. Better to do mirroring or RAID5 on the database volumes. Currently you are having a RAID 5 box which is taking care of redundancy. So when you want to do a RAID 5 with 2*146GB storage space, you should purchase 3*146GB disks.

Hope this will help you...

shameer

[Geoff Valdez]

Users provided correct solution(s).